If you came here today for one of my rosy “all is well in the universe” and “golly, gee, aren’t my kids cute?” posts you need to leave now. I mean it. Stop reading. I am NOT in a June Cleaver mood. I am in a meat cleaver mood.I may even say a bad word!

OK, so I guess anyone who is still around at this point stepped on their rose colored glasses too. Teenagers SUCK! No, I mean this literally. They suck.the.life.right.out.of.you! I blame it on breastfeeding! I do, really, (although, wait, I never really did that too long….hmmmm, maybe that is why they are so screwed up come to think of it, but I will save that for another post). See, when they are just these teeny tiny little innocent babes we teach them to suck all the goodness out of mom. We call it ‘nurturing’. They scream, we nurture. We fix.We teach them that mommy will make things all better.

Teenagers are worse than 2 year olds. Their tantrums are bigger, stronger and they have a much larger vocabulary to pull from. They are still the same tantrums though. They want what they want and they want it now and they often don’t care how they get it.

And you can’t protect them by swaddling them up in a little fuzzy blanket anymore.

They get to make real choices about their life. And those choices have consequences beyond the home. You don’t get to put a bandaid on those choices.

That hurts. And it is hard. It is heartbreaking to watch them suffer with consequences. You know they don’t have the maturity to fully comprehend the ramifications of poor decisions. But hey “It is not your life”

And you know what? They are right. It isn’t your life and you can’t swoop in and save the day anymore. But that doesn’t stop it from killing you inside and that is how they suck the life right out of you!

So, should you see the ominous teenager species out in the wild, hide quickly from their venomous bites and should you be harboring one in your home? Dear God, quickly break open some blood red wine, call me and offer me some antidote too!

Phew, I got through that without saying the F word once!

oh….and don’t even leave me a comment if you are going to tell me you have some angelic, dna altered teen who does not ever throw tantrums. 1)I won’t believe you 2)I may have to hate you